Live-reproduced on main: /handoff poll-waited a flat 60s for a TERMINAL
state, but the gateway's dispatch is a full synthetic agent turn (whole
transcript replay + delivery) that routinely exceeds 60s on long sessions.
The CLI then printed "Timed out waiting for the gateway. Is `hermes
gateway` running?" (false diagnosis), called fail_handoff() on the RUNNING
row (stomping the gateway's claim), and promised "Your CLI session is
intact" after switch_session had already re-pointed the session. The
watcher later overwrote failed -> completed: split-brain.
- hermes_state.fail_handoff gains only_states CAS; waiters can only fail
rows still pending. Owner (gateway watcher) keeps the unconditional form.
- CLI wait loop is two-phase: 60s for the CLAIM (pending) — a timeout
there really does mean no gateway — then up to 15 min for the claimed
dispatch with 30s heartbeats; a running row is never failed by the CLI.
- Desktop handoff.fail RPC now CAS-fails pending rows only; a running row
returns {failed: false, state: running} instead of stomping the claim.
Repro (real _handoff_watcher, real state.db, CLI as separate process,
75s dispatch): before — CLI timeout @60s + false message + row stomped;
after — pending->running@5s->completed@80s, clean CLI exit.
Teknium
e05c91ac71